Lenovo teaches another ThinkPad how to do Yoga

Lenovo announced more additions to its ThinkPad P series on Tuesday, including a convertible Yoga-style ThinkPad geared for folks who need to do a lot of digital sketching.Lenovo has announced a pair of new mobile workstations at the Autodesk University event in Las Vegas, and the front-runner is the latest ThinkPad Yoga.While the P40 is probably the most interesting of Lenovo’s upcoming ThinkPad Yoga models, the company also plans to sell a new $1299 ThinkPad P50 Yoga model with a 2,800 x 1620 pixel display and a Core i7 processor.

As more users find themselves in need of the serious computing power of a workstation, Lenovo is responding by presenting even more options for professional, workhorse machines. Alongside that there’s also the ThinkPad P50s, which Lenovo says is a “more affordable” workstation that still packs premium functionality in a sleek package. This new ThinkPad Yoga P40 may look like the previous models, but it’s loaded with workstation-level features and specs, beginning with the 2560×1440 IPS display with Wacom Active ES technology that boasts 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity. Lenovo’s Yoga line of notebooks have touchscreen displays and 360 degree hinges that allow you to fold the screen back and hold the computer like a tablet.

Lenovo says the software driving this digitizer has been carefully optimized with help from Wacom: “Professional artists and designers have been clear with the need for absolute precision and accuracy. To do this, users typically to purchased two systems – a tablet to deliver the sensitivity and accuracy of a premium sketching experience and a mobile workstation to render designs in powerful applications.

All three new devices are scheduled to roll out before the end of March 2016 and come with Windows 10 (though some models also offer Windows 7 and 8 options). Working with Wacom, Lenovo developed a unique driver to get closer than ever to the “pen to paper” experience. “Sketching is the foundation of everything we do”, said Kyle Runciman, industrial designer and strategic content manager, Autodesk. “The ability to perform all of these capabilities on a single machine is huge for our industry”. This creative device achieves a hybrid status through the use of a 360-degree hinge and a high-resolution 2,560 x 1,440 IPS touchscreen with 2,048 pressure sensitivity levels – twice as many as the 3,000 x 2,000 display in the Microsoft Surface Book.

The ThinkPad P40 Yoga also comes with the rechargeable ThinkPad Pen Pro which itself comes with several adjustable pen tips for a more nuanced creative experience for designers and artists. The machine features tried-and-true ThinkPad reliability for maximum uptime in or out of the office, with long battery life, Mil-SPEC tested construction to ensure uptime under the toughest conditions, and a lightweight design using advanced materials. Interestingly, the ThinkPad Pro 50s will also be available with a pre-loaded Windows 7 option in addition to Windows 10 while the ThinkPad Pro 40 Yoga is purely a Windows 10 machine. Even if you don’t have spare battery the system can last more than two work days, as Lenovo quotes 17 hours of endurance with the largest optional units.

The system also doubles the memory capacity of previous workstations with up to 64 GB of DDR4 RAM and support for FLEX drives with Samsung M.2 NVMe SSDs. It’s been almost 4 years since Lenovo introduced the first Yoga convertible, and since then we’ve seen models with big screens, small screens, powerful processors, and energy-sipping Core M chips. Inside, the P310 features an Intel Core processor or the Xeon E3-1200 v5, up to 64GB of RAM, and numerous storage options, including two 3.5-inch SATA slots, a 2.5-inch SATA slot for a SSD, and an M.2 SSD.

If the desktop seems more appropriate, it starts at just $729, a downright bargain for a workstation, depending on what that configuration looks like. All three of the new workstations will be available starting in Q1 of 2016, but their earlier counterparts are already available directly from Lenovo. Lenovo’s Windows devices have long been a popular alternative for consumers looking for something other than a Surface Pro to run the latest version of Windows and both their entry-level and high-end machines regularly get fairly popular reviews from the press and consumers. In our reviews of the Lenovo Yoga 3 and the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 for example, we found both to be fairly good cheaper alternatives to a Microsoft Surface or Surface Pro.